After deafness struck, Rachel watched as Geoff, who ran a haulage firm, suddenly struggled to drive, unable to hear sirens or car horns.

She said: “I witnessed my superhero dad for the first time seem vulnerable and I noticed how easy it was for people to leave him out, not intentionally but in a group conversation made up of speaking and listening.

“When someone’s ears don’t work, how included can they be?”

And so, at 16, she started to learn sign language. She persevered for five years, eventually becoming a qualified interpreter. She recalled: “I found it a helpful way of dealing with what had happened.

“It made me more aware about the things my dad might have gone through.”

Rachel was also pursuing an acting career. Having started drama and dance lessons at six, she went on to land small parts in Waterloo Road and Holby City before Hollyoaks came along in 2010 with the role of glamorous schemer Mitzeee Minniver.

During her three years in the Channel 4 soap Rachel started working with the National Deaf Children’s Society. She said: “I’d followed their work for a few years and just said if there was anything I could do to help, let me know.

“I’ve been actively involved in fundraising and campaigns ever since.” That includes a sponsored skydive and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania.

Rachel has worked for the National Deaf Children's Society and is a patron of Deaflinks Staffordshire

Rachel is also a patron of the charity dDeaflinks Staffordshire, for which she completed a ten-day fundraising trek across the Great Wall of China.

And she is continuing her mission to help deaf people. One of her biggest concerns is the lack of provision for deaf children in mainstream schools, with figures showing 78 per cent of them do not receive additional support.

She said last year: “The statistics of children failing GCSEs is far too high and completely avoidable.

“In 2003 the Government recognised sign language as its own language, yet 14 years later we still don’t learn sign language in schools but we learn French, German, Spanish and more.

Rachel tweeted her pride after the Oscars Shortlist included The Silent Child

“There is a huge lack of awareness within education in mainstream schools and I will do everything I can to change that.”

Rachel’s commitment to deaf causes continued when she was cast in American TV drama series Switched at Birth in 2014, playing a student teacher who was fluent in sign language.

Her three years in the groundbreaking teen drama included an entire episode conducted in sign language. Rachel recalled: “American sign language is quite different from British, including the entire alphabet, so it meant some extra learning.”

Living in LA for months at a time, she became pals with Brit TV host and fellow expat Kelly Brook, and developed a taste for the healthy Californian lifestyle.

strongarm tactics

And she always seemed unlikely to succumb to the Californian fitness world’s size-zero fixation.

Rachel is now back in the UK and has been filming the second series of BBC2 comedy White Gold, but in LA in 2015 she said: “I miss my mum and my family most of all but in terms of food, I miss proper tea, baked beans, Wrights pies and Staffordshire oatcakes with cheese and bacon.”